Clipboards, clickers could be drivers of change
Despite Mayor John Tory’s protestations to the contrary, Toronto could use a whole army of clickers with clipboards. They might not be much help counting cars on the city’s many highways, but making urbanism work requires more than keeping track of traffic.
Besides, in a city that refuses to get down and dirty looking for root causes of congestion, the big data Tory hopes for won’t do much to ease our transit woes.
Neither this mayor nor any other has been willing to face up to the basic truth that there are too many cars in Toronto and the Greater Toronto region.
Though many believe we should simply build more roads and highways, the law of induced demand tells us that the number of drivers increases as does space on the street. All the data in the world won’t change that.
But in a city where drivers’ needs have long been conflated with civic needs, curing congestion is seen as some sort of overarching municipal panacea. Cure that and you cure everything else at the same time. If only. This confusion will be on full display in July, when city council must face the issue of what to do with the Gardiner Expressway. Last year, city staff — yes, city staff — advised that the raised highway should be demolished east of Jarvis because it would cost more to keep it up than take it down. Other less timid observers argue the Gardiner should be removed all the way east from York St.
But does anyone really believe that council will approve such a step? From the mayor on down, local leaders would rather be boiled alive in crankcase oil than mess with even a small portion of the Gardiner. Despite the enormous benefits the city would enjoy — future property
Neither this mayor nor any other has been willing to face up to the basic truth that there are too many cars in Toronto and the Greater Toronto region
taxes from large amounts of highly developable land near the waterfront — the Gardiner is untouchable.
Under pressure, city staff will reverse its position and declare we can’t live without the Gardiner after all. We prefer to keep it no matter the cost, which will be billions.
There’s an important lesson here: Drivers are willing to ante up regardless of the price.
No one will be happy about having to shell out more; so what else is new? After a while, we’ll get over it.
This should make it possible, if not easy, to introduce measures that actually would reduce congestion. That means road tolls, congestion fees, parking levies and the like.
Of course, there will be backlash, but eventually Torontonians will learn to deal with it.
Like so many other things we once thought would always be free — from watching television to airplane baggage — driving will soon come with a surcharge.
No one will welcome it, but traffic will flow as it hasn’t for decades.
As for those clickers and their clipboards, they will be busy wandering the streets of the city and figuring out ways to bring a more finely grained sense of urbanism to Toronto.
They will look at creating pedestrian connections and how to make the city more accessible, integrate orphaned spaces and generally improve the quality of urban life. They will walk Toronto’s alleyways to see how they could be better used.
They will examine how people use the city’s public spaces, where they sit, walk and how long they stay. They will determine the best places for benches and trees, why some parts of the city attract visitors and others don’t.
They will look at the city not with an eye on how to move through it as fast as possible, but to find out how to make us want to linger longer. Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca